As expected, the Cubs have traded Jason Marquis and cash to the Rockies for reliever Luis Vizcaino. 

Marquis' strikeout rates won't impress anyone, but he's reasonably effective when he can keep the ball in the yard. His strikeout and walk rates have remained relatively constant the last three years; the main difference between his disastrous 2006 season with St. Louis and his solid 2008 with Chicago was that he allowed 20 fewer homers in 2008. Still, there isn't much upside there--at best, he's a league average pitcher, and as he enters his 30s he may have trouble even with that.

Of course, Vizcaino isn't any prize either, and it's no accident that he's played for five teams the past five years. He does strike batters out, but he has problems with walks and gopheritis, and moving from one homer-happy park to another shouldn't help him much.

The Cubs save some money and will probably use their rotation spot on a better pitcher in Sean Marshall. 

Why didn't the Pirates just give this guy seventeen million? (Photo: Scott Ableman)

I can't blame any fan for being frustrated with the Pirates' losing ways, because we're all frustrated. But I still find this letter a little annoying.

I believe the Pirates are doing a wonderful job at PNC Park to provide an entertaining venue. However, they have not provided a competitive baseball team to watch at the park. While much of the blame for this problem can be placed on past management, the current management does not appear to have taken a course that is much different. Current management's resistance to throwing away money in the free agent market is encouraging. However, free agents in whom the Pirates have shown interest since the end of the 2008 season appear to be of the same caliber of talent as the free agents of the past - players that few, if any, other teams are really interested in. What's worse, the trades that were made last summer removed proven talent for prospects who have not shown promise.

These views are shared by many Pirates fans, perhaps now a majority. For the most part, they're based on a massive disconnect between where fans expect results and where, at this early point in the tenures of Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington, we could reasonably expect to see them.

I think we all can agree that, regardless of how you feel about the Pirates' spending habits, the fortunes of a team in the Bucs' position are closely connected to its minor league system. Strangely, though, I don't think I've seen a rant like the one above that really addresses the minor league system at all.

Dave Littlefield's reign of error at the big-league level has been well documented. But he was no less awful at the minor league level, and by the end of his tenure he was essentially behaving like he thought the team would be contracted. He picked Daniel Moskos over Matt Wieters, passed over high-upside players late in the draft, ignored Latin America, ignored the back end of his 40-man roster, ignored the issue of depth. He behaved like nothing that happened after 2009 mattered. Despite a horrible farm system and no immediate chance of contending at the big league level, Littlefield took a reliever with the fourth overall pick of the 2007 draft. Think about that. Contemplate it. It's staggering.

In the early 2000s, the Montreal Expos actually thought they might be contracted. In that time and in the weird years that followed, they traded Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips for Bartolo Colon. They traded Chris Young (the pitcher) for Einar Diaz (who, incidentally, has the weird distinction of being traded not only for Young but for Travis Hafner). They traded Jason Bay for Lou Collier. They used first-round draft picks on Chad Cordero and Bill Bray (neither of whom are terrible pitchers, but they're both relievers). They let Vladimir Guerrero leave and didn't offer him arbitration. As a result, when the team relocated to Washington, it had a terrible farm system and little at the major league level. They had a hole they're still trying to dig their way out of, four years later.

The Pirates team Coonelly and Huntington inherited was really no better. There was just one potential impact player in the farm system (Andrew McCutchen), a perennial 67-win major league team, and a general lack of good young players anywhere in the organization.

There was no realistic chance the Pirates could have built a playoff team with the core that was in place. None. It was a mismatched team--an awful defensive team with a bunch of mediocre starting pitchers who pitched to contact. However encouraging the offense's start in 2008 may have been, the bushels of runs the Pirates gave up said much more about their future than the hitting did. The Bucs' pitching wasn't good, but the hideous defense, provided (of course) by the same players who'd suddenly made the offense look palatable, made the pitching look far worse than it actually was. The defense was awful at converting balls in play into outs. This isn't my opinion; this is a fact. And the pitching staff allowed tons of balls in play. If you were trying to build a bad team, the 2008 Pirates' combination of defense and pitching would be a great start.

I simply don't see any way around this. You can blame the Pirates' balls-in-play issues on guys like Zach Duke or Tom Gorzelanny somehow magically turning everybody into a great hitter, and there's no doubt that neither of those guys were great pitchers in 2008, but all the evidence, from the Pirates' defensive efficiency to things like those pitchers' line drive percentages and ground ball rates, suggests that the defense was a huge part of the problem.

The 2008 Bucs could not have become a contending team with a couple of better seasons from some underachieving pitchers. That wasn't the issue. The team simply wasn't good enough and wasn't constructed in a way that made any sense. And the total lack of depth in the farm system, along with the fact that many key players were already at their peak age and would become free agents after 2009 anyway, ensured that things only would have gotten worse if Coonelly and Huntington stood pat.

As for the Pirates' minor league system, consider that Littlefield managed to torpedo the short-season State College Spikes in 2008, nearly a year after he was fired. It sounds weird that a guy who hadn't been GM for a year could have much to do with a short-season team that mostly exists because recent draftees need a place to play, but nonethless, Littlefield managed to kill that team. There were other circumstances that didn't help, but mostly, the Spikes' awful record this year was the result of Littlefield's terrible drafting and indifference to Latin America. It's hard to underestimate how pervasive Littlefield's influence was, and how deadly. The minor league system Coonelly and Huntington inherited was nothing short of a disaster.

Given the unavoidable connection between minor-league strength and major-league strength, Coonelly and Huntington's only responsible choice was to rebuild the minor leauge system, and that is exactly what they have sought to do. The letter writer's claim that "While much of the blame for this problem can be placed on past management, the current management does not appear to have taken a course that is much different" only reveals, to me, that he probably doesn't read the paper he's writing to. For example, he'd only need to check this article about Latin America or this article about the draft. Things are obviously different, and if fans can't see it, it's because they don't understand the scope of the problem Coonelly and Huntington inherited, or aren't willing to accept that the minor league system has to change before the big-league team can meaningfully change.

I bet the writer of the letter is guilty of the latter. The author praises the Pirates for avoiding the free-agent boondoggles of the Littlefield years (I assume he means people like Jeromy Burnitz) but blames new management for pursuing players few other teams would want.

Well, first, what desirable player would want to play for the Pirates unless the Pirates offered him substantially more than his market value? Pat Burrell signed with the Rays for $16 million, but there isn't a chance he'd come to the Pirates unless the Pirates offered substantially--substantially--more. I don't know that for sure, but I know that for sure. And beyond the fact that having Pat Burrell would be cool, what does a player like that have to do with the Pirates' long-term plan? He wouldn't put the Pirates over the top. Other teams should want to pay more for desirable free agents than the Pirates do, because the value of an extra win is a lot greater for an 85-win team than it is for a 67-win team. A playoff appearance brings in money, so teams that are very close to that threshold are the ones that should be spending big on free agents.

I know most Pirates fans don't really care about the dollar value of a win, and to a certain extent, they shouldn't. Money is the owner's problem, not ours. But the Pirates are right to avoid expensive free agents, for whom they'd have to overpay, probably with long commitments. Think of it this way: if it's the end of the 2011 season and a core of players led by Pedro Alvarez, McCutchen and Jose Tabata has just led the Pirates to an 84-win year, wouldn't it be a bummer to have to pay $12 million in 2012 to an aging and increasingly ineffective veteran signed in the 2008-2009 offseason? Wouldn't you rather have that money to use then? The fact is that, by the time most players reach free agency, they are past their primes. Committing to an expensive free agent would thus create problems later, if the Bucs actually did get to the point when they were ready to compete.

If you would like the Pirates to sign star free agents--well, who should they be? Rocco Baldelli isn't a terrible idea, and in the BD comments, rogero has also argued very intelligently in favor of signing players like Adam Dunn and Ben Sheets. Those definitely aren't the world's worst ideas, but given Dunn's contact issues and hulking physique and Sheets' injury problems, I wouldn't bet on either of them being effective in 2011 or 2012, when they'd likely still be on the Pirates' payroll.

If free agents that require long commitments are mostly out, that mostly leaves the Pirates looking for free agents few other teams want, because (as one commenter on the original Post-Gazette thread points out) few players would want to sign with the Pirates for a year or two unless the Pirates could promise them something other teams wouldn't offer, like a starting job.

In other words, people who look at the free agents Coonelly and Huntington are pursuing or not pursuing and see the same old Pirates are missing the point. In fact, looking at the 67-win season the Bucs are likely to have next year and seeing the same old Pirates misses the point. The minors and the majors are intimately connected, and the former has to come before the latter. Remaking a completely busted minor league system takes time--probably three to four years. If you want to see the differences between Huntington and Littlefield, the minor leagues are the place to look. This is not to excuse any failures Huntington has had at the major league level--any GM whose team uses Luis Rivas as much as the Pirates did last year has something to answer for--but to worry about those and not see the obvious improvements at the scouting and development levels misses the point entirely.

UPDATE: WTM nails it:

Littlefield went for moves that looked like improvements because moves that really are improvements for a struggling franchise are nearly always painful. He would have agreed enthusiastically with Kovacevic’s statement about winning in 2009. Littlefield’s and McClatchy’s single biggest failing was that they lacked the fortitude to make tough decisions, but now Huntington and Coonelly are being raked over the coals whenever they make one.

Three years and $30 million, ESPN reports. As a blogger whose only real connection to the players is watching them on the field, I've long liked Bradley a lot more than a lot of people who've had to put up with him as an actual human being, so naturally I think this is a really good deal for the Cubs. Bradley isn't old, put up a .436 OBP last year, and has generally hit like the crazy person he is since being traded from Oakland to San Diego in the middle of the 2007 season.

He's a big-time injury worry, but his good contact ability and solid strike zone judgment both bode well. Cliff Floyd was a pretty similar player in terms of his age, hitting, and injury problems when he signed with the Mets before the 2003 season; he had trouble staying on the field in New York, but for the first few years, he was good when he played. I wouldn't expect Bradley to continue to hit like he did in 2008, but he should still be very effective for 120 games or so each year.

-P- Pat has a long recap of the 2003 season, and my eyes are burning. For better or for worse--mostly for worse--2003 has to qualify as one of the more colorful and entertaining seasons in recent Pirates history.

-P- I enjoyed this story about former Pirates top draft pick Bobby Bradley and sympathized with his outlook on his career:

“I’ve read things where people said I was a bust and I don’t think that is necessarily fair,” said Bradley, the Pirates’ first-round draft pick in 1999 from Wellington (Fla.) Community High School, who never reached the majors. “I pitched pretty well when I was healthy but I had injuries. I had Tommy John surgery on my elbow. I had shoulder surgery. At the end of my career, I couldn’t feel the fingers on my left hand and had surgery to repair a nerve. I did everything I could to pitch.”

Well, a bust due to injury is still a bust, but I understand what Bradley's saying. Pitchers have injuries, and Bradley had about a million of them. That's probably not his fault.

Anyway, Bradley now plays a lot of golf and is a competitive poker player.

-P- Via Primer, the Mariners have hired Tangotiger, a.k.a. Tom Tango as a statistical consultant. Tangotiger runs the Inside the Book website and has occasionally posted here at Bucs Dugout and other SB Nation sites.

-P- The Rays are reportedly close to signing Pat Burrell to a two-year, $16 million deal, which amazes me--the Phillies gave Raul Ibanez $30 million, but their old star, a somewhat similar but younger and probably better player, gets half as much? Anyway, Burrell would DH for the Rays, and he'll be a good one. Nice signing. The Rays just keep getting more interesting.

Interesting blurb from the Post-Gazette:

Management heads into the spring with the stance that only [Paul] Maholm has a job in the rotation. But be sure that Ian Snell, Ross Ohlendorf and Duke have a leg up. That would leave one spot for Tom Gorzelanny, Jeff Karstens or Phil Dumatrait. But that is for now. Much could change with spring performance and health.

I'm trying to identify a pattern in the idea of Snell, Ohlendorf and Duke being on the inside track, but I can't. Snell has both upside and a good pre-2008 performance record, so I think he should be in there. Duke actually isn't the terrible pitcher a lot of Pirates fans think he is, but there's not much upside there. Ohlendorf has some upside in that he throws hard, but he doesn't have much of a performance record in the majors or even particularly in the minors, and projection systems hate him. I don't understand why he'd have a better shot at a rotation job than anyone else. I'm as much about upside as anyone, and I'm interested to see what Ohlendorf will look like when he's not worn down the way he was with the Pirates last season, but given his age and stuff, I wonder if just letting him pitch out of the bullpen might be a better option. That way, he could quit worrying about pitching six innings and just let 'er rip.

Other than Maholm (obviously) and Dumatrait, who I don't think should be allowed near the rotation except in emergency, I don't see a clear case for or against any of these guys. (Forget the brief moment when Dumatrait looked like a solid rotation option last year and look at his 2008 and career stat lines; he's terrible.) I can easily imagine scenarios in which Karstens is the Pirates' best starter in 2009, and he's probably the best bet of any Pirates starter other than Maholm to post an ERA below 4.50, but he also has no upside whatsoever. I can also imagine Snell or Gorzelanny posting ERAs north of six, but I also think the Pirates need to keep trying them. EDIT: There's also Dan McCutchen, who I forgot to mention but might have more upside than most of the pitchers discussed above. It'd be interesting to see him get a rotation job, but given the relative wealth of options, McCutchen's lack of minor league experience, and the fact that he's not yet on the 40-man roster, he may not get a lot of consideration.

Here's my incredibly tentative proposal for the Pirates' Opening Day staff:

SP Paul Maholm, SP Ian Snell, SP Zach Duke, SP Jeff Karstens, SP Tom Gorzelanny

CL Matt Capps, SU John Grabow, SU Free Agent, RP Tyler Yates, RP Ross Ohlendorf, RP Sean Burnett, RP Donald Veal

That's a pretty rickety bullpen. I'd give Ohlendorf the first shot at the next open rotation position. I'd love to keep Veal, but unless he produces right away it may be difficult, because the bullpen is so problematic. If Tyler Yates is the third-best guy in your pen, you're in for a long season.

From John Sickels. The incredibly low ranking of Brad Lincoln is a little bizarre, but there's useful information here.

...Thus saving us from discussing Derrick Turnbow anymore, which I'm pretty happy about.

In other news, the Angels signed Brian Fuentes to a two-year, $17.5 million deal, wit a 2011 option that vests if he closes for long enough. Fuentes isn't young and flashy like Francisco Rodriguez, but he's still a really good pitcher, and his 2008 was nearly as good as Rodriguez. Fuentes is also a fun pitcher to watch, because he throws harder than most other pitchers who throw with a 3/4 type of motion.

Finally, the Indians acquired Mark DeRosa from the Cubs for minor league pitchers Jake Stevens, Chris Archer and John Gaub. Stevens is an older reliever who's close to the majors; Archer is a youngster who played full-season ball at age 19 last year but struggled mightily with control; and Gaub posted flashy numbers in the low minors in 2008 at age 23. Stevens is a decent bet to be a useful reliever fairly soon, and the other two are C-grade prospects. That's not a terrible return for DeRosa, but the Cubs are still a contending team and DeRosa is still a very useful player; the Cubs must really be pinching pennies if they're making a trade like this. Even if this trade anticipates the signing of Milton Bradley, the Cubs must be keeping a close eye on their budget. Anyway, DeRosa will play third for the Indians.

-P- I'll be doing a concert in DC tomorrow, and then I'll be in the recording studio Saturday and onstage in Morgantown that night, and then I'm flying to California Sunday. Updates will be a little less timely than usual. My apologies.

Despite the new top prospects lists that have been published recently, I haven't had enough fun, so here's a post for the serious minor league dorks about minor leaguers I haven't seen on any top prospects lists this year, but who might be worth watching anyway.

Here's a list of way-under-the-radar players who stand some theoretical chance of breaking out and being relevant after the season's over. I say "theoretical" here because the Pirates still don't have a very deep farm system and will probably again spend lavishly on the draft, so open spots on top prospect lists are likely to be filled by new acquisitions and not players who are already in the system. But still: Ronald Uviedo came from virtually nowhere to be protected on the 40-man roster after the season, and Jeff Sues finally emerged from injury oblivion and wound up protected too. Also, a number of recent Latin American signees--including some actual, interesting ones, of the sort we haven't seen in a long time--will make their stateside minor league debuts in 2009, and some could emerge as prospects. I've only listed Latin players who stand a decent chance of playing in the U.S. minor leagues this year, which means that 2008's top signees aren't included.

Starling Marte, CF, 10/9/88: Marte was the DSL MVP last season, and Latin American scouting director Rene Gayo loves him. He has good power, and his body has filled out as he has aged. Expect to see him at Bradenton this year.

Elicier Navarro, LHP, 10/26/87: The small lefty put up insane numbers in the DSL last year. Baseball America's Ben Badler had his eye on Navarro even before that. He doesn't throw terribly hard yet, but he does have three pitches.

Andres Santos, LHP, 11/8/86: Santos was one of the young Latin American players the Pirates grabbed in the minor league Rule 5 draft. The Yankees signed him years ago for $300,000, and he put up great numbers in the DSL last year, mostly as a starter. The other two players the Pirates picked in that draft, Gerardo Esparza and Rafael Quintero, are also worth watching.

Brandon Holden, RHP, 1/1/88: Holden was highly regarded coming out of a Florida high school before the 2006 draft, but he fell to the 13th round due to injury problems. He was awful in his pro debut in 2007, but he walked only five batters in 30 innings at Bradenton in 2008. It's too early to give up on him.

Chris Aure, LHP, 10/13/89: Aure held his own in the GCL last year, which doesn't sound like much, but it's actually pretty impressive given that his previous team was the North Pole High School Patriots. North Pole is outside Fairbanks, Alaska, so he did quite well against players who presumably have much more experience. The Pirates will probably move him slowly, so perhaps he'll be at State College this year.

Harrison Bishop, RHP, 8/17/84: Bishop has never been a heralded prospect, but he pitched well as a reliever for Hickory in 2008, then followed that up with a good performance in Hawaii Winter Ball. That the Pirates sent him to Hawaii at all probably says something.  

Andrew Walker, C, 1/22/86: The '07 fifth-rounder had a good debut at State College in 2007, then fell off the map in 2008. He hit very well in April and June, though; the problem was that he was absolutely awful for about a week's worth of at-bats in July before being shut down with an ankle problem. WTM saw him in July before he vanished for the year, and reported that the ankle was affecting Walker's play. Depending on how much his 2008 stats were affected by the ankle problem, there may still be upside here.

Rogelios Noris, LF, 3/12/89: The Mexican outfielder has had two consecutive good years in the VSL, showing good power and decent plate discipline both years. The Pirates like him and he'll almost certainly play stateside in 2009.

Raul Chavez has signed a minor league deal with the Jays. That I'll miss him a little says much more about the Pirates' catching situation the past few years than it says about him. Chavez posted a 63 OPS+ last year, which actually raised his career OPS+ to 44. He can't hit at all. The only thing he did right was not mess things up behind the plate, and there are about a million journeyman AAA catchers who can do that. Unfortunately, the Pirates' catcher in 2007 was a major leaguer who couldn't.

Was Ryan Doumit's excellent 2008 season a career year? (Photo: ztil301)

This is the continuation of a series begun here, mostly for the purposes of informing new readers about what goes on here at Bucs Dugout. My hope is that readers will follow my arguments more easily if I explain some of the ideas that inform them.

6. Aging is tough. Conventional sabermetric wisdom holds that the average peak age of a baseball player is about 27, although some have argued it's actually a bit later. Either way, most players are in the big leagues precious few years before they start to go downhill. The aging pattern is particularly cruel to mediocre players. It is not uncommon for players to peak in their early 20s, or while still in the minor leagues. (This may or may not have happened to Steve Pearce in his standout minor league year of 2007, when he was 24.) These tendencies make rebuilding a very tricky enterprise, but it's actually pretty convenient for teams like the Pirates that these trends exist--by the time a player has enough service time to reach free agency, he's probably already past his prime. For example, take the position players who got their first sustained burst of major-league playing time for the Pirates in the 2005 and 2006 seasons. These players included Ronny Paulino, Humberto Cota, Ryan Doumit, Brad Eldred, Freddy Sanchez, Jose Bautista, Chris Duffy and Nate McLouth. These players, as a group, weren't actually all that young--most of them were in their mid-20s by the time they arrived. So it's no surprise that many of them are already gone. A look at their likely peak ages may surprise some readers.

It is possible that some of these players haven't had their career years yet, but that looks unlikely, and the only ones who could reasonably be described as still on the upswing are Doumit and McLouth. It might look like the Pirates got unlucky with these players, but actually that isn't true--most of them just weren't very good, and on the whole their peaks occurred at around the standard times for players of their skill level. The problem was that they weren't particularly young when they arrived, so they had a limited amount of time to get where they were going. The Pirates thus got these players' best years at very cheap prices. The problem was that they simply weren't good enough.

7. Regression to the mean is tough. Here's a description of regression to the mean which, as it applies to baseball players, basically means that after a player has a season (or a month, say) that's unusually good or unusually bad for him, he'll typically return to something closer to his career norms. Of course, this rule comes with all kinds of caveats, and not every unusually good or bad season is fluky. But we should be wary of making decisions based on unusually good seasons.

8. Fans who aren't on board with points 6 and 7 tend to overestimate their favorite teams. A couple weeks ago in the semi-infamous Jason Bay post, I responded in part to a claim over at the Post-Gazette that "the offense... looked to be in place" before the Bay and Xavier Nady trades last summer. Not to pick on the Post-Gazette, but I'd like to explore that idea further.

There were, I thought, a couple things wrong with that statement. First, the position players who were scoring runs on offense were causing problems on defense, and thus were not as good as their stat lines made them look. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the early-2008 offense was built almost entirely around Bay, Nady, McLouth and Doumit. Three of those guys were in the midst of what might well have been career seasons, and thus were due for some regression to the mean. And, in fact, they all experienced it as the season wore on.

Nady, after being traded to the Yankees, immediately returned to being regular old Xavier Nady. Doumit and McLouth tailed off down the stretch.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I think these guys are bad players. Far from it, and I think the extension the Pirates gave Doumit was a good idea. But it does mean that you can't count on a player who's suddenly excellent to continue being excellent. Doumit's age (27 last year), injury history, position (catchers age poorly), and brilliant hitting in the first half of 2008 make it somewhat unlikely he'll ever top his 2008 season.

One might point out here that although the Pirates were getting surprising seasons from Nady, Doumit and McLouth in the first half of 2008, Freddy Sanchez and Adam LaRoche had done nothing up to that point, and thus the Pirates might be expected to sustain their offense with contributions from those players even if Nady, Doumit and McLouth faded. Well, fair enough, and in fact Sanchez and LaRoche were very good in the second half.

But to suggest that the offense was "in place" in any meaningful way--keeping in mind that the Pirates needed to look past 2008 to a time in the future when they could compete--ignores point #6. Aging patterns are cruel, and the general tendency of baseball players is to get worse, not better. The players around which the Pirates' early-2008 offense was based were already in their late 20s or early 30s. In two years, they probably won't be nearly as good as they are now. The Pirates' pitching was terrible last year and needs time to improve. Expecting the Bucs to retain their offensive players and wait for pitching would be a very bad strategy that would result in perhaps one decent year in a best-case scenario and, more likely, several more years of failure if it didn't work. And even that best-case scenario assumes that Bay and LaRoche would stick with the team instead of becoming free agents after 2009 anyway.

The mistake I think the Post-Gazette is making is assuming that the good things will stay the same, and that the bad things will get better. Fans often do this kind of thing, and occasionally they turn out to be right, but the more likely scenario would have been that the pitching would get a little better, and the hitting would get a bunch worse as the result of regression and of players aging. Major league baseball players are fleeting things, and it's unwise to expect aging players to stay the same or get better.

That sounds pessimistic and mean, but again, keep in mind that it would not be possible for the Pirates to compete if this weren't true. The Pirates can pay players with less than six years of major league experience bargain prices. If players tended to peak in, say, their ninth year in the big leagues, the Bucs really would not be able to enjoy the best years of a Nate McLouth or a Jason Bay. But because players peak so soon, they can. So they'll be able to compete once they get the right core of young players.